ABSTRACT
China covers over 9.5 million square kilometres (3.7 million square miles), making it approximately the size of the continental United States. Unlike the United States, which has a population of 300 million, China’s population in 2010 exceeded 1.3 billion, the largest population in the world under a single government. Exacerbating the impact of such a large number of people is the fact that the majority live on less than 40% of China’s territory. The reason for this lies in China’s extremely varied topography. Large expanses of the land are covered with deserts such as the Gobi and the Takla Makan, or high mountains, such as those of the Tibetan plateau. Historically, these areas were only part of the Chinese empire for short periods of time; their inclusion as a part of today’s China is a direct result of the expansion of the last dynasty which was able to conquer and hold the regions now known as Inner Mongolia, Xinjiang, Tibet and Qinghai (see Map). To distinguish these newer additions from the core of traditional Chinese territory, the term ‘China proper’ is used to refer to provinces that have been part of China for over 2,000 years.
